“Nay, I swear by Osiris,” she protested
wildly. “The light came in with the hour
of dawn.”

Kenkenes released her and hurried away. He did
not doubt that the old woman had told the truth.
He had overslept the light. Unas could not
have taken Rachel and Masanath to Tanis together.
The Israelite would have been sent on before.

There was yet Atsu to question, and then—­on
to Tanis to rescue Rachel or to avenge her.

He met no one until he reached a bazaar of jewels
near the temple square. An armed watchman stood
before the tightly closed front of the lapidary’s
booth, above the portal of which a flaring torch was
stuck in a sconce.

“The house of Atsu?” the watchman repeated
after Kenkenes. “Atsu is no longer a householder
in Memphis.”

“When did he depart?”

“Eight or nine months ago, at the persuasion
of the Pharaoh.”

The lightness of the man’s manner irritated
the already vexed spirit of the young artist.

“Be explicit,” he demanded sharply.
“What meanest thou?”

“He was stripped of his insignia and reduced
to the rank of ordinary soldier,” the man answered,
“for pampering the Israelites. He is with
the legions in the north.”

“Hath he kin in the city?”

“Nay, he is solitary.”

Kenkenes walked away unsteadily. The nervous
energy that had upborne him during his intense excitement
was deserting him. His hunger and weariness
were asserting themselves.

He turned down the narrow passage leading to his father’s
house. And suddenly, in the way of such vagrant
thoughts, it occurred to him that the inscription
on the tomb had been pointedly denied by the old woman’s
statements.

“Ah, I might have known,” he said impatiently.
“Rachel put the writing there for me when she
left the tomb for the shelter Masanath offered her
in Memphis.”

The admission cheered him somewhat, but it did not
repair his exhausted forces. By the time he
reached his father’s door he was unsteady, indeed,
and beyond further exertion.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE MURKET’S SACRIFICE

The murket sat at his place in the work-room, but
no papyrus scrolls lay before him; his fine implements
were not in sight; the ink-pots and pens were put
away and the table was clear except for a copper lamp
that sputtered and flared at one end. The great
artist’s arms were extended across the table,
his head bowed upon them, his hands clasped.
The attitude was not that of weariness but of trouble.

Kenkenes hesitated. For the first time since
the hour he left Memphis for Thebes, months before,
he felt a sense of culpability. He realized,
with great bounds of comprehension, that the results
of his own trouble had not been confined to himself.
He began to understand how infectious sorrow is.